Carole Freeman:

Wonderful. And you’re joining us, I’m going to check the audio here. We’re doing auto adjust. Excellent. Excellent. Okay. And you’re in Alabama, right?

April Smith:

I am. I am on the very Southern most part of Alabama we call it LA Lower Alabama. Right on the coast, right on the water.

Carole Freeman:

All right. And if you’re joining us, I can see we’ve got somebody watching from the Facebook group. So if you’d like to let us know who you are, I can’t see who you are, unless you actually do comments. So feel free to join us, let us know you’re here and where you’re joining us from. And we’ll… any questions you’ve got for April, go ahead and pop them in the comment box, chat box there as well too. So, so April we connected through business group, but it also turns out that you have a keto background as well, your own journey. Would you please share with us what your keto journey.

April Smith:

I would love to. So I have been following the keto diet lifestyle however you want to say it for about five and a half years. And I feel like I started way back where there just wasn’t all this fabulous info out there about it. I went through, when I started it, I had the keto flu for like five straight days. Now we know, and I’m sure you guide your people that come through your program through what to do, but I didn’t know what to do. So it was just slug my way through the day and lay on the couch and then repeat and eventually I got over that, but yeah the things that keto has done for me is one, so I’m now at 50 post-menopausal. Yay. To me that sounds like… I feel like it should be later in life but for me it happened earlier.

April Smith:

I guess that’s normal, but it feels earlier for me and that comes with all sorts of changes in what your body looks like and how your body feels, and keto has helped me maintain my weight. It’s helped me stay leaner and as a fitness professional, well I hate this part, but what I look like to some degree matters to some people. Doesn’t matter really what’s going on up here and what I’ve learned and how many years I bring to the table, but people look at you and they expect you to be a certain way. And so keto, it helps me stay the size that feels good to me and helps me stay fit. It also helps me with my focus and brain fog and which is also something as we’re getting older we’re experiencing more and more, at least I have been as I was losing all of my hormones going through menopause and I don’t snack at night.

April Smith:

I’m not in the pre-keto. I would be in the fridge nine o’clock shopping around. I didn’t need anything in there, but I was just bored, craving, hungry, all of that has just gone away. And I try to recommend this way of eating to everybody that will listen to me because it’s just made a huge impact on how I feel and how I look.

Carole Freeman:

And obviously it works well for you that you’ve maintained it for five and a half years so.

April Smith:

Yeah. It is. It absolutely is. I have a partner in life, my boyfriend Bill, when we started dating he joined me on the keto journey. He’s about three and a half years in, he lost 50 pounds, reduced his blood pressure so much that the doctor took him off one of his medications, joints feel better, knees feel better. So it’s a lifestyle that we live in our house every day, I do have a teenager that lives with me and he eats that way too. And then if he also wants to add something we eat into his diet and he just has that as well but it is, we all do it in my house.

Carole Freeman:

Oh, it makes it so much more easy and sustainable when the whole house is on board I know.

April Smith:

Absolutely. And if he wants something, a potato or something with his meal that we’re not going to have, then he just eats it. Now there’s no stress or worry or problems.

Carole Freeman:

Oh, that’s great. Yeah. I remember when it was household with my son and his girlfriend and we were all on the same page and she would cook us all kinds of fun stuff. So definitely makes a lot easier, and I’m so happy to hear all the health improvements that you all are experiencing too. So such a great example too, that’s one of the things that people are up against all the time as they see all these articles that say how, “Oh, this it’s not sustainable.” It’s like, well, any healthy dietary change takes work and dedication and commitment to it. No change is easy.

April Smith:

If you’re going to change for health, then you’re going to have to maintain that no matter what it is that you choose. So it’s totally… you can… five and a half years later. Yeah. I’m still here and I’m going to be here. I will stay here.

Carole Freeman:

Yeah. Well, it’s much harder to eat only 1200 calories a day for the rest of your life than it is to eat delicious foods that you enjoy.

April Smith:

And 1200 calories sucks. Sorry, it does. I was in the fridge at night looking on 1200 calories, hungry and irritated.

Carole Freeman:

Yeah. So how did you get interested in Pilates? And then specifically the niche that you found in helping older mature bodies?

April Smith:

So, 18 years of doing fitness and wellness, and about half of those nine of those have been also including Pilates, and I was always interested in it but I really wanted to study under an expert. I really think that kind of stuff matters. I’m not someone who would sign up for a weekend course and call myself, “Hey, I’m certified.” You can do that, but I just don’t find any value in that and so about nine years ago, I found a master teacher that had a Pilate studio, where she had the equipment in the Pilates world, they call that the apparatus, I’ve got a reformer behind me. You can see the bar a little bit behind me, and she had all the equipment and she was able to teach and as a master teacher she had years and years of experience.

April Smith:

And so I was able to go into her studio and start learning under her, and then when she felt I had grasp enough of it, she started letting me work with some students and start teaching, and that sort of how I got into that. I’ve always worked with older adults. One of my first clients was a man in his eighties. He changed the path that my career has gone on because instead of being concerned about how he looked in his bikini, nothing wrong with that, because I like to look good in my bathing suit too, instead of worrying about losing 20 pounds, so you can fit in the size whatever. All this guy wanted, he had survived cancer, was to live the best life he could for the rest of his life and when he became my client, I realized that fitness didn’t have to be that other stuff, which was somewhat boring to me.

April Smith:

And it could be life-changing both for me and for other people, and so I started seeking every older adult client I could get. And that just turned into after I started working and studying and becoming able to teach Pilates that really I just decided at some point I’m only going to work with women that are in their fifties, sixties, and seventies and that’s all I do these days. I have one male client, primarily women that’s my thing. That’s who I enjoy spending time with and helping and since I have nine years ago, halfway through this journey of 18 years of this work, since I’ve added that in Pilates, my clients bodies changed. Not in the sense that, “Oh, look they’re a perfect size six.” But their knees move better. Their hips feel better. Their low backs don’t hurt anymore.

April Smith:

They tell me these amazing stories. On Friday my client that’s probably been with me about eight years. Her name’s Jeannie. She just out of nowhere, she’s on the reformer. She said, “You know, I really wish I had started Pilates sooner.” Because and she’s always worked out. She’s very much an exerciser her whole life. And she said, “I used to work out with a trainer and just do weights and stuff, but since I’ve been doing the Pilates my back doesn’t hurt anymore.” She said, “I used to go cut the grass and my back would hurt.” She’s like, “I just don’t have that going on anymore.” And she’s a very dedicated several times a week student, and to me to be able to help people just feel better, move better as we are getting older and aging is an amazing thing to do. It’s easy to get up in the morning and go to work.

Carole Freeman:

Yeah. So it sounds like you’re just helping people with quality of life, just living a better pain-free life.

April Smith:

It’s the new thing good for all… we don’t work out to work out or I don’t anyway, I don’t know about other people. Most people don’t work out to work out. They work out so they can kayak and paddleboard and go swimming with their grandchildren’s and hike on vacation, those things.

Carole Freeman:

So for those people don’t really know what Pilates is. What is it? And why is it so good for making your back not hurt?

April Smith:

So Pilates has been around a long time, started, founded by Joseph Pilates, and I’ll skip all the history stuff. You guys could look it up online. You can look up Joseph Pilates, but the stuff that’s important is that it is a focus first on getting your core stronger. So all the things we do, we start from that aligned up posture first, alignment of your spine position and then we add the arms and the legs and the bigger movements in. And I always want to do a quick share because a lot of people don’t know and they get it wrong a lot of times, what is your core? And I’m going to make this very non-scientific and super fast, but you will remember it I promise. So if you had a Barbie doll and you snapped her arms off, and you snapped her legs off and you popped her head off like my mean brother did on my Barbies.

April Smith:

My brother did this I swear. He really did. He’s sweet now, but when we were little he wasn’t. So what’s left to your Barbie if you take off all of that stuff and what are you holding? You’re holding her trunk, right? And simply the trunk of your Barbie doll is your core muscles. So if you think core is the six pack muscles, that if you were lean enough you could see them that’s it. It is those, but it’s also the muscles on the side, the muscles of your back, your gluteal, or your rear end, your pelvic floor muscles, something that is women that are 50, 60, and beyond we’re thinking about these days, it support your organs all of that front and back make up your core. So when you then take that idea of, “Okay, it’s my trunk first, finding alignment, finding good posture so I don’t look like this and don’t shuffle around the grocery store.” Get it stronger, then we start to add arms and legs in. It creates just this… a way that you’re moving in the world that is better and different, stronger, more confident, more resilient.

Carole Freeman:

I remember a friend of mine many years ago, also a Pilates instructor that shared a story, similarly working with an older gentleman where he gained several inches of height just because as we get older our body doesn’t have the strength to hold itself up correctly. So that was… I’m betting you have a similar stories of-

April Smith:

I absolutely do. I have a client whose name is Brenda, and she made me this little testimonial video about how… and she’s a shorter lady, she’s like around five foot and I guess at home she was measuring her height. I don’t know if maybe she was concerned about losing height, but we’d been doing Pilates together a few years and she came in one day and she’s like, “I just want you to know I’m taller, I’ve measured that I’m taller.”

April Smith:

And I’m like, “That’s amazing.” It’s the little things in life, right? But it is the difference between… so if I skip that, it is the difference between that sinking, rounded position, which this is a position that not only we don’t like the way it looks, but it’s a position that you could possibly fall if you’re always rounded over, because your center of gravity, your middle is forward and it changes it to this. And yeah, you can put yourself in this position for the most part, but you also have to do the work to get yourself stronger so you can maintain it easier. So that’s all part of that step that we do as well.

Carole Freeman:

Yeah. Well, did you have a couple of easy movements you were going to show us or what did you have planned for-

April Smith:

Would you like to do a little moving together? We certainly can. Today right before this, I did my coaching call with my online program members, my membership. And so I have a membership called fit women over 60, and we do a monthly coaching call together and we always move together as well as explore what we’ve been doing in the past month. So we could maybe do a little bit of that if you guys wanted to, I’ve got to move my chair and move this ball. I’ve got to… I’m in my little Pilates studio. I need to move my ball. You get it out of the way. So let me think about what we’ll do here, but if you want to join me… let me adjust this, you don’t need any equipment.

April Smith:

Today we use the Pilates ring, but we’ll skip it because probably most people don’t have one of these, but these you can get and use and they’re great, but you’ll just need a little bit of room, sitting in a chair and we’ll start with…let’s start with a… if you are on the online retreat this is going to be a reminder but if you weren’t, it’ll be a good… remembering or starting with a posture first. So let’s do that really quickly and then we’ll start moving from there. So if our normal position is this with our phone or I don’t know, sitting in front of your computer, click, click, click, or even driving, let’s find better position. So how do you do that? So if you lift your chest up a little bit and you take your head on top of your shoulders and then your rib cage in that sitting directly on top of your pelvis, now you’re in a more stacked up position.

April Smith:

So you could do this in a chair. It would be exactly the same if you stood up, right? You would just be standing, and then I like to think of when I’m in that position, here’s my collarbones. There’s not an anatomy test I promise later, but here’s my collar bones. Can I stay wide and broad across my collar bones? Because the opposite of wide and broad across my collar bones is sinking and rounded, right? So just a simple little idea of open my chest up a little bit, just puts you in a better position. Everything stacked, I would be neutral-

Carole Freeman:

April, can I ask real quick right here?

April Smith:

Yeah.

Carole Freeman:

Do you find though that people have gotten as they age a body position that they can’t even tell they’re not standing up straight? I’ve noticed this with some people that had foward position where their backs really rounded and they’re just used to standing like that, and so they can’t even tell they’re not standing up fully straight. So is that something where you need somebody else just to take a look at you or maybe take a photo of yourself so you can really see… how do you see when you’re not in fully erect stacked up body posture?

April Smith:

And that’s a really great point. I have this picture of… I was doing a challenge earlier this year and I was teaching that alignment and one of the women going through it sent me these two photos. She had her husband take them, and she said… and there was a startling difference. They were from the side one was just this position, and then the next was using the queuing that I just gave you guys, had to come out of it and she said, “I’m not always excessively like this, but sometimes when I’m not thinking about it like I’m washing the dishes or I’m not paying attention, I just end up there.” So you could have someone take a picture, you could just find a comfortable position for you, how you normally are and maybe have someone take a picture of you from the side.

April Smith:

You could come against a wall maybe and come pretty close to it and put your back against it. How far forward is your head from being able to touch the back of the wall? And if you push your head on the wall, you push your chin up to do it. So a lot of times if you got nasty stuff going on, trying to get our head retracted and pulled back ends up looking like this, if we’ve been this way a long time, we’re very much not conscious of what we’ve got going on here. The other very common thing that I see with a lot of women is I always called it sway back, which is you have your shoulder blades back behind you like my hips are here.

April Smith:

That feels terrible to my back, but we think, “Okay, I’m going to sit up tall.” And we end up having to lean back to do it, instead of being able to just stack things up and it’s… I just want to emphasize, we’re never going to be perfect. I’m here and I just… I fix it, right? I just find it and fix it, get taller, get stronger and I’m just going to always work on it. The thing you don’t want to do is not be conscious of it and then one day you look up and then getting out of this has become too hard, right? It’s too much change.

April Smith:

As we know in this sport, we would go for the keto diet. What we do all the time is what our result is going to be. So if we are like this for 70 years, then it’s really hard to change this versus, “Oh, I figured it out. I’m going to start to work on it a little bit, stretching it open and getting it stronger in the back.” So, yes. So take a picture or go to the mirror or you can even put your phone in selfie mode or what have you, and turn and look. These days if you don’t want anybody to see you there’s lots of technology that you can check on that and not have anybody involved.

April Smith:

So if we want to do a little moving in our chair, we’re going to… I’ll turn to the side so you guys can see me. Let’s do a little bit of hinges. So before we do that, hand on your belly button, tall posture, eyes straight ahead, not chin on your chest, take a breath in your nose. Let’s do a little bit of engage your abs as we breathe in through the nose, big breath. Now out through the mouth exhale and when you exhale pull your belly button towards your back. So exhale, exhale, the more you push that air out, the more you will feel your abdominals contracting, you might even feel your pelvic floor a little bit engaging as well. Another way to think about that is try to wear or try to imagine you’re putting out a pair of jeans that don’t have lifer in them.

April Smith:

I don’t know any [inaudible 00:22:05] throw those away, but remember when we used to lay on the bed and zip then suck it in, so that kind of engagement as you exhale. So you need to put that breathing in there too, because it’ll help contract these and then you can stay in a safer position. So let’s do a little bit of AB work without having to end up in this position. So tall, eyes are straight ahead on your inhale through your nose, but you can do it with me and then as you exhale zip up as in hinge your spine back, hinge your trunk back until you feel your abdominals, I’m going to my hand, turn on and stretch to support you. You don’t have to go far, take a breath in as you’re holding and then as you come back up, get taller. Tall, tall, tall, tall, tall looking straight ahead.

April Smith:

Let’s try it again. Inhale first and then exhale as you move back, keep your chest up a little so you don’t sink. Staying long, tall and long here. You get to a point where you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to fall backwards or just go any further, but my abs are really engaging.” Come back and get taller, grow taller up. Let’s do one more together. I’m trying to keep my eyes here and not drop my chin. Breathe in. Exhale that air out, as you go back you’ll start to feel your abdominals contract to help support this long position. There’s lots of ways to make this harder, we won’t do them today by moving arms and legs and then as you come back up you’re going to get taller, taller, taller. Now let’s do… I love rotation because life doesn’t just happen here or behind us.

April Smith:

Life happens to the side, right? You’re in the kitchen washing up almost potatoes, but we’re not eating those. You’re washing your [inaudible 00:23:55] and then you turn and you grab something from the counter and you come back. That’s where life happens. If we never move in that way, then when we’re training, then we begin to lose the ability to move that way. Have you ever called someone’s name and instead of them turning their head, they have to turn everything to look at you because they’ve lost the ability to move up here? So we do a lot of rotation and flighty. So as you’re in your chair, I’ve got my sit bones as bony points here. They’re planted in there. I’m not going to lift or shift. I’m going to keep them heavy, reach my arms out as if I’m going to touch the opposite walls with my fingers.

April Smith:

But I didn’t hike. I just soften my shoulders and we’re going to go three times around and then we’ll come to the other side. So as I rotate, I want you to get taller, breath in, get taller, keep turning one more time and taller, and then let’s come right back. Soften those shoulders and visualize being a barbershop pole. Let’s go to the other side. Let’s turn a little further maybe, soften your shoulders, turn, turn one more time. And then all the way that to the front and then bring your arms down. Some people have shoulders stuff. They’re not using arms. You can turn with a cross position and then the other way, but the idea that as you rotate you linked in up from the top of your head versus a turn in a sink. So two really simple things you can do just sitting in your chair to work on that alignment of your spine, and also your posture adding this end as well.

Carole Freeman:

Wonderful. Now I’m remembering how we started at our retreats with just some…

April Smith:

Simple thing.

Carole Freeman:

Simple things that are very effective. And I think that’s… People that do Pilates, one of the reasons they love it so much is it’s so effective at building that core strength through out, having to do thousands of crunches and most people think of like, well crunches or how you build your poor support, but there’s so much more to it than that. And everyone I’ve ever heard that’s been in Pilates just absolutely just loves it. So I’ve done it in the past. The place I lived last in Seattle, so probably about two years ago when I moved there, there was a Pilate studio one block from my [crosstalk 00:26:23] where I was going five or six days a week for probably six or eight months. And yeah, it was much more enjoyable than trying to sit at home and do thousands of crunches.

April Smith:

And I love that you brought up crunches because I love to talk about this. I’m not a huge fan of crunches for this point in my life or the women that I work with in their sixties and seventies, why? And there’s a couple of reasons, but do we need more positioning like this? And that is, if you put your hands behind your back and you were crunching, what are you doing? You’re going to hear then we just said, we wanted to get out of that, right? For flection of their spine, which is this position doesn’t feel good because maybe they’ve got neck or back stuff. The other thing that women that are getting into that age 50 and beyond is flection of your spine, if you have a bone loss, osteoporosis or osteopenia in your spine, flection is contra-indicated because it puts you at a greater risk for a fracture of one or more of your vertebra.

April Smith:

So yes, you’re going to probably do some flection in your life because you’re going to tie your shoe and what have you, but excessive crunching or even you’ve seen that machine and this is not Pilates but that machine in the gym where you get in it, and then you crunch down with weights on it and stuff, really may put you at risk. Put your spine at risk but you in not a great position, and there is a good that a Pilates that can do that to you. I tend to do a lot less fluxion with the people that I work with. We get stronger other ways, because like I said, you don’t need more of this and I don’t need my neck to hurt. And a lot of times people start to crunch using their neck and not their abs.

Carole Freeman:

Make so much more sense. Yeah. That’s wonderful. Well, that’s excellent. So we’ve heard today about April’s story of following kito and how she chooses to maintain it, because it just helps her feel so much better in so many ways. And also her partner, boyfriends success and health transformation as well. We learned a couple of really easy. I don’t call them exercises, but movement movements that you can do-

April Smith:

Moving, yeah.

Carole Freeman:

… that you can do even when you’re sitting at home all day at your desk or at work, I guess neither of those would work in your cars, trying to think of where else you could do those very easily, but you’d go outside [crosstalk 00:29:10] oh yeah, without the hurdles there you go.

April Smith:

A little forward, you can do a little hinge back maybe.

Carole Freeman:

Yeah. Yeah. So what… in beginning to wrap this up, what other things were… was there anything else you were hoping I would ask about, or that you’d like to share with our viewers listeners?

April Smith:

Yeah. Yeah. Let me think if there’s anything. I can’t think of anything in particular. No. Anybody has any questions?

Carole Freeman:

Yeah. So for those of you in the crew, Shirley’s posted in under this video, the link to the freebie for a special for our crew members. So grab that and for anyone else watching this later on YouTube, how can people get in contact with you April?

April Smith:

So my Facebook page is fit women over 60. I also have a Facebook free community, same name, Facebook, sorry, fit women over 60. And if you’re on Instagram, I am Pilates for mature bodies and you’ll find my email and all of that as well.

Carole Freeman:

Oh, cool. Cool names. Excellent. All right. We’ll put that information in the show notes as well too. So let’s see. Oh, here, I’m going to do an old school question that I used to do to wrap up my keto chat, wrap up the notes. So this is a fun one, if the asteroid was coming for the planet today, we were all going to be wiped out, which is weird because we went through something recently where everybody thought like, oh, maybe we are going to be-

April Smith:

We felt like that a little bit.

Carole Freeman:

More like a fiction movie type of… the asteroids coming for the planet. What would you pick as your final meal? What’s your favorite last supper type of thing?

April Smith:

So, okay. So I could eat chicken. Okay. This is so boring. I could eat chicken wings every day. I had chicken wings today, actually we smoked some over the weekend. In Alabama, we have this amazing white barbecue sauce-

Carole Freeman:

Okay. I was going to ask you.

April Smith:

If you all have not had Alabama white barbecue sauce, you’ve not lived yet. So I think I would probably go with some crispy skin wings dipped in yeah, white barbecue sauce. I know, so boring. Right? Maybe a little bit of broccoli on the side. So with the platter, of course.

Carole Freeman:

Okay. So the white barbecue sauce from what I know, it’s Manny’s and vinegar is it… what do you put on yours?

April Smith:

It’s a Manet’s vinegar combo. There’s some, a little bit of garlic powder, onion powder. You can… there’s all sorts of recipes out there, but it’s like a little bit tangy and it is divine and there are great recipes, if anybody wants to make it at home and around here you can find it in some of the barbecue restaurants too because then I know exactly what’s in it.

Carole Freeman:

Yeah. That’s cool. Yeah. Because it’s harder to find a non sugary barbecue sauce at most least more in the Southwest out here so.

April Smith:

Yeah. Even the… nowadays there are some out on the shelf. I don’t always love… I’m not a big fan of sweet barbecue. I like vinegar based barbecue and in Alabama that’s not so much a thing. So the white barbecue sauce is really good.

Carole Freeman:

Well, thank you so much for being here today April, and teaching us a couple of things and just coming back and sharing your story with us. And thanks everyone for watching. If you enjoyed this subscribe, like, share, sharing is caring, share this with somebody else that you think has a mature body that could use a little more movement and a quality of life improvement in your flexibility and strength and core health.

April Smith:

Thank you. I’ve appreciated joining you again. It’s always a blast and good chatting today.

Carole Freeman:

Yeah. Thanks for watching everyone. We’ll see you all next time. Bye.